polytheism

Sorry for the lack of writing this year, everybody. I’m in a fallow year, and I’ve been cutting back on various spiritual community responsibilities and focusing on personal spiritual ones, instead.

In any event, I do have one community event that I’m extremely excited about. I’ve been wanting to host a public shrine hospitality suite at PantheaCon for years, and this year it’ll finally be happening! (Because of this, and of it being my fallow year, though, I won’t be presenting anything on the main schedule at PCon this year.) Our Suite’s main focus is creating public shrine space for several different pantheons for con-goers to attend. It’s very loosely based on what the Coru Cathubodua have been doing with their Temple of the Morrigan suite. We’ll also be running a few rituals and classes as well.

Because renting and running a Suite is expensive, however, we’ve started an Indiegogo fundraiser campaign. We have a ton of perks, from hand-crafted goods to ways to be involved in the suite even if you can’t attend.

Here are some of our perks:

1. Opening Ceremony: Have your name be included in our opening ritual; be listed in the suite as a donor; and receive a SRWB badge ribbon. (Minus the badge, granted, but it’s cool to have.) ($10 donation)

2. Opening Ceremony with Video: Same as #1, but you’ll also receive a video file of the entire Opening Ceremony. ($25 donation)

3. Libation Offering: This is my favorite perk, and really in the spirit of polytheist practice. It’s also a great way to do priest/ess work remotely and actively be a part of the work we’re doing at PCon. For this perk, you will get to choose a bottle of alcohol to be placed on the altar of your deity or pantheon IN YOUR NAME, so that visitors can offer to YOUR gods in your name. You’ll also get the video, mention,and badge ribbon. You’ll get to specify vodka, rum, whiskey, mead, or red wine. The alcohol will be a popular mid-level brand. You can even specify which brand, if you want.) ($50 donation)

There are also hand-carved antler runes, handmade leather crowns, and felted skulls. Please check our our page and donate if you can!

Though it may not seem like it, I don’t like to complain much on the blog. I’ll whine, yes; and go “WTF have They done to me now??” for a bit, but I think for the most part I’m very supportive: “Yay Gods! They are great! Believe in Them! Trust Them!” Many times I feel like I’m a polytheist cheerleader.

But the truth is, there are a lot of negatives to being a tiny human working so closely with really big entities. And what my goddess gives, She can also take away.

Ever have that experience where the Gods put you in situations just to get a reaction out of you? (Granted, the reaction they are going for may be “growth”, but still. Poke the bear until they finally do what you want them to.)

Since posting about the “irreconcilable differences” between Freya, Loki, myself, and my guy, I’ve gotten a lot of feedback. It’s been great to hear other peoples’ stories of having gone through something similar with their gods, or who have seen similar issues between Freya and Loki in the past. It was kind of unusual, actually, that I posted about the drama on the blog. Normally I would have bitched about it to a few close friends and left it at that. But I gut checked before I posted, and got a green light, so… I posted. And like I said, I got quite a bit out of support and knowledge in doing so. (The Gods work in a multiplicity of ways; I can’t say for certain, but I wouldn’t be surprised if this reaction was one of their side goals from this incident.)

In any event, I can now say with some certainly that I know what Freya’s goal was for me out of all of this. I had to accept my role as Queen.

So, it appears that I have been in a bit of an amber-colored cloud. A two-year-long amber-colored cloud. It began right before I started my initiation work with Freya, and lasted until….well, this evening, when she decided that my boyfriend was “not good enough for me,” and proceeded to tell him all of the reasons why. *headdesk*

Now, I have loved Freya pretty much since I found out She existed, yes, but the really heavy NRE did not hit in until my initiation. I have been happily riding high on it for a while now. I didn’t notice it so much earlier because how could anyone not love Freya? Everyone loves Freya! She is wonderful! And for the most part, everyone does love Freya–Gods and humans and jotuns alike. She’s just so lovable–goddess of beauty, love, sex, gold, etc., and all. I’ve come across a very few people who were scared (or at least, very wary) of Her, but never anyone that didn’t actually like Her. And I’ve also rarely gotten an ill response from her towards most people. But my boyfriend? She is not a fan. Ironic, because everyone else seems to like him, and She’s the one who threw us together and has been cheerleading at us from the sidelines.

My Journey to Devotional Polytheism–The path I took from Christianity to Devotional Polytheism was guided by a need for direct interaction with deity and a desire to connect more with my ancestry. Heathenry gave me both. #WhyIAmHappilyHeathen

My apologies to all for not posting much recently. I blame this on 1) starting a new relationship (NRE, yay!); 2) my trip back to CA; and 3) starting a Patheos bi-weekly column (pretty much at the last minute). These are all good things–I can’t complain–but together they have commandeered all of the resources I have available. So, my #90DaysofOdin has slacked off quite a bit (though I still find myself talking about Him and defending Him pretty regularly, so I will count those days). And my other minor plans for world domination have also slacked off because, well, love. Love, people. Got to have your priorities straight.

"To be a catalyst is the ambition most appropriate for those who see the world as being in constant change, and who, without thinking that they can control it, wish to influence its direction." -Theodore Zeldin